Theo Markettos wrote:
Cost of a basic smartcard is somewhere in the region of $1-$5. That's not
going to be cost effective unless it becomes feasible to make them out of
organic or polycrystalline semiconductors (cheap, but the density and
performance is nowhere near yet). Then they could be printed on paper
again, or plastic.

In Portugal (Porto and Lisbon), they use stiff paper smartcards for
ticketing, and the cost of the card is a few tens of Euro cents in
addition to the cost of the travel (I can't remember the exact cost, but
it was considerably less than $1).

The cards are two layers of stiff paper or thin card and the aerial is
made of foil in between the two layers. There is a small (about 1 mm
square) chip that you can see as a small lump in the card. (A few years
ago I disassembled a Lisbon one to see how it was constructed).

--
Jeremy Double {real address, include nospam}
Rail and transport photos at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmdoubl...7603834894248/